Well, I’m quite late tonight, but I have a legitimate excuse! I was christening my new bathroom! 🙂 Yes, it’s (more-or-less) finished! Finished enough for me to move into it, anyway! The mark on the ceiling (you can sort-of see it, if the light’s coming from the right direction, you squint really hard, and you know exactly where to look for it!) still has to be sanded back and painted – I’m not looking forward to that! Once again, plaster dust will go everywhere, all over my lovely clean bench and my almost lovely clean floor! (it really needs to be mopped!) – and we only had the cleaning lady in this morning! Paul did a pretty good job of cleaning the room before he left tonight, and after he left, I went through with bench squirty stuff, a sponge, and an old tea-towel, so between us we managed to get the place just about spot-on! Oh, it does look just too, too delicious for words! I can’t christen the shower until Wednesday, because it’s been sprayed with a special “easy-to-clean and non-slip” coating, and it really needs to dry out thoroughly – Clarke said I could use it tomorrow, but it would be better if I left it until Wednesday – so Wednesday it shall be! (and I can’t wait to try that out, either!) It’s such a lovely room now – and the concealed led strip lighting under the vanity unit – you can see it a bit in the photos that Julian took – really make it look “special”! (but of course, I’m just a trifle biased! 😉 ) Now, of course, all I have to do is move everything into it! And decide where everything’s going to live – no doubt that’ll be a “work in progress” for a couple of weeks, as I’ll probably keep changing my mind about what goes where – but I don’t care! I have my bathroom! 🙂

All the stuff from Adelaide arrived this morning – boxes and boxes! (*groan* more boxes!) At the moment Julian is sitting here going through a bottle-carton sized box of classical CD’s… there’s some really nice music in there! 🙂 The Grandfather clock is sitting next to Julian’s bookcase in the Office, and it really looks like it belongs there because they go very well together! There are a couple of very large paintings – I’m not sure where we’ll put them yet, and the camphor-wood chest is happily sitting in the living room. I don’t think the Christmas Tree will fit on it unless we pull the chest quite a way out from the wall – but that’s alright – it’s only while the Christmas Tree is up – after that, the tree will be put away, and the chest will be pushed back against the wall – and it’s far enough out of the way where it is that if it is poking out a bit far, it won’t make no never mind, anyway! So, lots of new things, right before the busiest time of the year – Christmas! And speaking of things Christmas-y, I did find the phone number for the Ferguson Plarre place in Burwood, so this morning I rang and asked them if they had any large puddings – they did, so I then asked them if they could put one aside for me, please, and I’d be sending my husband up to collect it, sometime today. They were fine with that, and said that they’d put one out for him. Julian didn’t want to leave things to chance – we didn’t know what time the Adelaide stuff was arriving or how long it would all take to unload from the Removalist’s van, so he didn’t wait until later, he just went straight up and got our Christmas Dinner dessert! 🙂 I don’t know that we’re going to need much more in the way of food – we usually have two frozen Steggles Turkey Breast what’s-its, and I think we only have one at the moment, so we’ll have to get another one. One is to eat for Christmas Dinner, the other one, which gets cooked at the same time, is generally carved up and stored – for sandwiches and cold-cuts (and we also give some to the kids to take home for their lunches, too!) We’ll also need ham, potatoes, pumpkin, peas and beans – and tomatoes, for our “tomato pies” – tomatoes, cut in half, well seasoned, and topped with finely chopped onion and breadcrumbs. “Dot” each tomato half with teeny knobs of butter, place them into a greased baking dish in the oven with the rest of the dinner, for the last twelve minutes of the main meal’s cooking time. If you want to make one large tomato pie, slice the tomatoes and onions into discs between .5 cm and .75 cm wide, lie them flat in alternate layers in a greased baking dish, seasoning well as you go (however don’t use too much salt!) liberally sprinkle a mixture of finely grated Parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs over the top (the mixture should be about three parts breadcrumbs, one part Parmesan, otherwise it gets too salty, which is why I said not to use too much salt before!) Once again, “dot” the top of the “pie” with butter, and bake as above. To serve, either give everyone a baked tomato half, or dish out a half-tomato size portion of the second recipe, as an accompaniment to the main meal.

I’m so pleased with my bathroom! 🙂 It’s hard to concentrate on writing – I keep thinking of where I’m going to put what! 🙂

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – Clarke and Paul will be over to gather up all their tools and trailers and what-have-you’s – and although we have no idea what time they’ll be getting here, we’re not terribly concerned – I think Julian’s decided to leave the last bits of Christmas Shopping until Wednesday now, as I’ll probably be too busy playing in my new bathroom to want to go shopping! 😉 I do need to go shopping before Christmas, anyway – I didn’t have the time (nor the energy!) to go looking for stocking fillers for himself, when I went out Christmas Shopping with my favourite eldest daughter last week.  I also need to get some “special” cards, that I give everyone on Christmas Day. Perhaps in between me setting up my new bathroom, we can put the Christmas Tree up! Oh! 🙂 What I good idea! I wish I’d thought of it (oh, hang on a minute, I did think of it, didn’t I!) I also think that we should take the opportunity tomorrow to make a detailed shopping list of all the things we’re going to need for Christmas Day, and for the weekend! Anyway – that’s my scatter-brained plan for tomorrow (along with playing a bit of WoW! 😉 )

Food: Last night for dinner we had the pork, which was pan-fried, with chips, beans, and the ubiquitous half a tomato! We also had another very small serving of the pudding – cold this time, and it was just as, if not more, delicious than it was when we had it hot the other night! For lunch today I had three Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat cottage cheese, a couple of slices of tomato, and some low-fat cheddar-type sandwich cheese. Julian gave me the three crispbreads instead of the usual two because there was so little left in the fridge to put on them, so I think that some shopping is going to have to be done tomorrow, willy-nilly, whether we want to, or not! Anyway, I have no idea what we’re having for dinner tonight – I asked Julian, and he said that he didn’t have any idea, either, so I’ll have to let you know what we had in my blog tomorrow night! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Once again, I was so sure that I’d bounce right back up into the 65kg zone again – but I only went up one point – from 64.2kg to 64.3kg. I actually had to weigh myself three times – the first time the scales told me I’d gone up one point, to 64.3kg. The second time, they said I’d gone up two points, to 64.4kg, so I found myself having to weigh myself a third time (best two out of three, remember? 😉 ) where the scales, after quite a bit of dithering up and down, decided that they’d been right the first time, so I weighed in at 64.3kg. There seems to be absolutely no rhyme nor reason for it – I guess it’s just fluid retention, or whatever. Let’s see what sort of a result I get tomorrow morning! Oh, instead of migrating my scales down to my new bathroom, I’m leaving them in the en-suite – it’s far easier for me to weigh myself in there for Julian to witness, rather than making him walk all the way down the hall corridor to my new bathroom, just to watch me weight myself! 🙂

Well, dinner’s been eaten – it was marinated and pan-fried chicken, with (you guessed it!) chips, zucchini, and the usual suspect, the half tomato. As Julian said there wasn’t enough pudding for both of us, he graciously allowed me to have it, along with my diet jelly. The jelly was a cranberry and raspberry one – one of my favourites, but the pudding, which I had without the light cream because it had gone a bit off, was… almost as good as that chocolate brownie wot I had the other day! I’m so glad we managed to get the large pudding for our Christmas Dinner dessert! 🙂

Anyway, that’s about it from me for this evening – I’m about to head off to start ferrying some of my bathroom paraphernalia to their new home! It will require several trips, I think! 🙂 However, do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how my bathroom move went, and if I have everything arranged to my exacting and fastidious standards yet (surely you jest!) Will all the pudding I’ve eaten over the past three days have acted as a more “stodgy” form of brownie, and sent my weight rocketing skywards? And probably much more importantly, will our Christmas Tree be up! Find out tomorrow night, right here! 🙂 Until then though, please try to bee good for the next three days, remember to always forgive your enemies, because nothing annoys them more, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂